Lisa Nandy and UK Culture division stop Elon Musk’s X after scathing ‘abuse’ accusation
In a scathing update, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy accused Elon Musk’s X platform of spreading ‘abuse and misinformation’ and said she and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport would no longer use it
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has confirmed she and her department will no longer use X(Image: Getty Images)
Lisa Nandy has announced she and her department are quitting Elon Musk’s X – lashing out at it for allowing “abuse and misinformation” to spread.
The Culture Secretary said the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will no longer post on the much-maligned platform, formerly known as Twitter. In a scathing post she said it is not healthy for Britain’s democracy.
Ms Nandy told her 302,000 followers: “I’ve decided to leave this platform and my Department will too. A platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate. It isn’t healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don’t want to support it.”
The message was reposted by DCMS. Hers is the largest government department to quit the platform so far, although several individual ministers and MPs have announced their own boycotts.
Last month attorney general Richard Hermer ordered his office to stop posting on X. This was due to worries the site was being used to incite violence and racism. He was reported to have made the decision following widespread disorder in Southampton, which saw protesters clash with police in the wake of the Henry Nowak murder sentencing.
Following her announcement former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips told Times Radio: “I took myself off it about a year and a half ago and let me tell you Lisa Nandy’s mental health is about to get better and I absolutely agree with what Lisa Nandy has said. It is very very difficult when you have the people or the person who owns that platform talking up potential terrible stuff on the streets of our country and then for government departments to remain on it.”
Billionaire Musk has repeatedly been accused of inciting division in Britain, including a claim last year that civil war was “inevitable”. Last month Keir Starmer told reporters: “We need to also assert who we are as a country, because Musk, again, has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division – that is not who we are in Britain.”
Other government departments, including No10, have so far declined to do so. But No10 has a fractuous relationship with X, having been locked in a bitter row earlier this year when its AI chatbot, Grok, allowed nudified pictures of children to be generated by users.
Musk later backed down and made changes to the heavily function. But there have been growing calls for the government to stop using the platform.
In January former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh – who is tipped to return to the cabinet under Andy Burnham – said: “I have not personally used X/Twitter for some time now. It was already an unpleasant place prior to its takeover by Elon Musk, but since his acceptance of hate speech and anonymous online abusers, it has become utterly unusable.
“I continued to maintain an account and occasionally post because a critical mass of people, including the government and journalists who we need to communicate with as MPs, remained on the site.
“However, the revelations around the enablement, if not encouragement, of child sexual abuse mean it is unconscionable to use the site for another minute.”
